This story recounts how some astronomers have figured out that a pair of super-massive black holes are orbiting each other and will likely merge 10,000 years from now.
But what I don’t get is that the story says that the black holes are sending out jets of high-powered energy, which helped thrcastroners figure out what was going on:
I always thought that nothing escapes a black hole so how could they be sending out jets of energy?
Please fight my ignorance. 
There is the black hole, from which nothing escapes(ish), then there is the hellish swirling cloud of distressed matter orbiting the black hole. That’s where the jets come from. Here’s what thrcastroners have to say:
Yeah. An isolated black hole wouldn’t emit anything (except for the extremely faint Hawking radiation) - but there probably aren’t any isolated black holes around.
BTW, when I say “nothing escapes(ish)”, I mean:
@Darren_Garrison had me googling thrcastroners.
I assume they are a dual class, Thaumaturge-Spellcaster.
So, if I understand correctly, it’s not that the black hole is “sending out jets”, but in the extreme conditions surrounding a black hole, outside the event horizon, there can be gravitational effects which create high-energy jets?
Pretty much, except it is not just gravitational effects, there is some pretty wild magnetic stuff happening too.
I think Saffer is right - without a strong magnetic field (created by compressing the magnetic field of a star, say, into a tiny location), you don’t get the jets.
a good neighbourhood to avoid, then.